


Obscure Sorrows

by Agent_24



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-26
Updated: 2016-09-26
Packaged: 2018-08-17 08:50:50
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,291
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8137889
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Agent_24/pseuds/Agent_24
Summary: Klexos: Noun. The art of dwelling on the past. Your life is written in indelible ink. There's no going back to erase the past, tweak your mistakes, or fill in missed opportunities. When the moment's over, your fate is sealed.





	

**Author's Note:**

> This is a request for [FoxyWolfMeerkat13](http://foxywolfmeerkat13.tumblr.com/), the lovely beta of my ongoing chapter fic, Sleeper! I can't thank her enough for all she's done!! <3
> 
> Thanks to [lowmidnight](http://lowmidnight.tumblr.com/) for beta reading this one since Foxy couldn't! <3
> 
> This fic is based on The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows, created by brilliant linguist John Koenig, who works to fill in the holes of the language and give names to feelings that humans experience but cannot yet name. I'm deeply impressed with his work! Once he creates words, he either makes an blog entry or youtube video that beautifully describes the meaning of the new word. It's deeply inspiring to me, so please check him out [here](http://www.dictionaryofobscuresorrows.com/), and I hope everyone enjoys how I've used it!

_Énouement_.

A pretty word...a made up word, Hanzo was sure, likely by one of those supposedly poetic language enthusiasts. Énouement. A noun, a feeling, a word describing the bittersweetness of having arrived here in the future, of finally knowing the outcomes. To most, the feeling would be simpler....the feeling of knowing one's first job, the feeling of seeing a full grown tree that was once a sapling, of a sibling growing old.

It was nostalgic, Hanamura. Over time, he would arrive and discover that almost nothing had changed; the pink blossoms still fell from the synthetic sakura trees, the arcade down the street still had the same games, the neon letters of the ramen shop still blinked on and off as they pleased. But there were always tiny, minute differences that seemed to catch his attention. The highschool lovers that once frequented the arcade might be seen walking with an infant. The ramen shop was now managed by the late owner's son. Some of the less attractive houses had been remodeled.

He would have felt like an outsider, even if he wasn't wanted dead by the clan.

He expected a better fight. Each year, he expected more well trained guards, more people who could protect the castle. He bristled at the thought of it....how could the elders have groomed him to such perfection, while twenty of their guards wouldn't be enough to stop him? If he was clan leader -

If Genji could have mocked them for -

Énouement. _The desire to share priceless intel with someone who hadn’t already made the journey, as if there was some part of you who had volunteered to stay behind, who was still stationed at a forgotten outpost somewhere in the past, still eagerly awaiting news from the front._

* * *

Hanzo took up mercenary work. 

He didn't....really _need_ to. He'd bled a few of his father's accounts dry before he left, and that would be enough to satisfy an army for a decent length of time. But he was bored (restless) and too well-trained to sit idle. He needed a weapon in his hands. That's what he was good at, that's what he needed to preoccupy himself with.

He killed with a sword once, then tossed it away (then picked it back up and took it to a weapons dealer).

 _Make it clean,_ employers would instruct. _No traces. No leads._ Hanzo found that to be easy enough, well within his skill set.

Most times.

 _Do it quietly,_ the elders had instructed. Hanzo hadn't done that. He'd made a mess.

Archery was clean, a few drops of blood at most. There was a sort of detachment in it; he never felt the weight of limb bodies against his blade, never felt the force it took to pierce flesh. Knock, draw, release. Simple.

Mostly.

On occasion, he fumbled.

* * *

_Lutalica._  

Noun. _The part of your identity that doesn't fit into categories._

Hanzo considered that often, had done so since his youth. _When you were born they put you in a little box, and slapped a label on it. This world has already got you pegged._

It was never really that the world had him pegged so much as he never gave anything _to_ peg. He didn't think that example particularly suited him; it was less like being in a box (where, at least, he would've been able to squirm), and more like he'd been born a block of clay that needed sculpting.

Genji, he thought, had suited that description better, suited the idea of squirming around in a little box. As an adult, that is; from birth, he'd always been free as a bird. _The Shimada Sparrow_ , always unrestrained, always singing, always flitting out of reach.

He thought about the day Genji came home with green hair, how the elders pitched their fits while his father looked on in amusement. If Genji ever squirmed around in a little box, it was for a small length of time, after which he quickly tore it to pieces. The only labels he was content with had always been something at least vaguely related to _playboy._

Hanzo tried to think of some aspect of himself that the elders didn't shape. All he managed to come up with was that he was still terribly, terribly shy.

Lutalica. _The idea that there’s a part of you that never really found a home, rattling around in categories that couldn’t do you justice._

* * *

During the first year, the assassins were less 'assassins' and more 'kidnappers'. The elders, Hanzo knew, would have a hard time keeping face when their firstborn heir was missing while their second born was dead. Of course, the first meant more than the latter; in the clan's eyes, dying for their 'cause' wasn't such an impossible thing to ask. Killing for them was normal. The victim never mattered; once someone was given a task, failing to complete it would leave a smudge on their name. 

Abandoning the clan was more a nasty smear than a smudge. Expressing disapproval towards the clan elders was a smudge, but complete abandonment? Running away? That was putting a target on your back. That was a death sentence. It might take a while, but the men hired to bring him back would eventually only need to present a small piece of his body to get paid.

Cheap fluorescent lights flickered over the mirror. Hanzo stared at his reflection, wiped a smear of blood from his mouth. The cut on his lip stung. Hanzo turned on the cold water and splashed his face.

It would have been less messy if he hadn't been drinking. It would've been simple; a well placed arrow in the “assassin's” chest would've been easy if his vision hadn't been swimming. His first two shots had landed, but not where he wanted; he'd pierced the assassin's arm and shoulder. He'd been aiming for the heart.

It seemed that they always came in his weaker moments, when he was drunk or when he hadn't slept. Fruitless endeavors, really, though he supposed he couldn't exactly blame them. Coming after him honorably would be a handicap, and he couldn't exactly say that an assassin's methods were ever terribly moral.

Hanzo stared at himself in the mirror. His cut was stinging, his cropped hair wild and plastered to his temples with water. He needed to shave it again.

He dried his face and started to pack his clothes. He looked forward to the time he could stop living in and out of hotels.

* * *

_Lachesism_.

Another noun. A feeling. Another fake, pretty word that sat heavy on Hanzo's tongue. _The desire to be struck by disaster._ Hanzo liked that, liked how well it captured the fearsome storm of suicidal thoughts that swam in his mind during his every waking moment. He felt it when he stood outside during thunderstorms, when he stood atop buildings or at the edges of sinkholes, when he entered his castle and wondered if, this time, the assassin would prove to be enough.

He was vaguely insulted at the consistency at which the assassins failed, at the way his clan kept underestimating him, kept expecting him to fall apart. Did they not realize that he had a duty? What did danger matter, what did all the violence matter, all the death? Did they think that he would mind killing a stranger, having slain his own brother?

He waited. Numerous times now, he had waited. Still, nothing; no assassin, no hired gunmen, no guards that proved a real challenge. No warriors that pushed him to his limits.

Lachesism. _The desire to be struck by disaster - to survive a plane crash, to lose everything in a fire, to plunge over a waterfall - which would put a kink in the smooth arc of your life, and forge it into something hardened and flexible and sharp._

* * *

Hanzo woke with pains in his legs.

It was frequent when he first lost them, less so now, but neither their past frequency or their current infrequency helped him prepare for it. Sometimes it was just numbness, sometimes hardly pinpricks of pain, and sometimes it felt like a _repeat._ There was a sort of underlying guilt that accompanied it too, a soft little _this is nothing_ _in comparison,_ a quiet _how dare you complain about this_.

It had been his own fault, in any case; he'd fumbled. He'd failed. His father's death had marked the start of a series of failures and realizations that despite all his training (his grooming, his carving), he had no idea what he was doing. He was the student who could do things in theory, and never in practice.

He pressed his fingers into his legs, shaking and blinking back hot tears. He gritted his teeth, rubbed in circles, counted under his breath until the pain subsided. He exhaled, tried to sleep, got up and poured saké, drank until he finally passed out.

Hangovers were a bitch.

* * *

_Zenosyne_.

Noun. _The sense that time keeps going faster._ Hanzo realized it after year seven.

Year seven. _Seven._ When had seven years gone by? It was all a blur of sake and killing and bad dreams or no sleep. Seven years. He realized when he saw that couple walk by again with a child instead of an infant, when he looked in the mirror and saw gray at his temples...when he realized he'd let his hair grow out. It was just long enough to form a dinky ponytail at the base of his neck, and he thought about cutting it short again every time he saw his reflection.

Seven years.

He wondered if the rest of his life would go by like this, like dull, slow days that somehow accumulated into years without his noticing. He tried to recall Genji's details and found that many were absent from his memory. He couldn't exactly remember the shape of Genji's nose or if the scar Genji earned tumbling out of a tree as a child was on his left shoulder or his right. He couldn't remember if Genji had dyed his hair before or after his 19th birthday or when he decided that ripping the sleeves off his gis was a good idea.

Zenosyne. _The idea that even when you sit still, it feels like you're running somewhere, and even if tomorrow you will run a little faster, and stretch your arms a little farther, you'll still feel the seconds slipping away as you drift around the bend. The idea that life is short, and life is long, but not in that order._

* * *

Hanzo had lost his touch.

He slipped inside, footsteps noisy and arrows clinking in their quiver, having caused a ruckus and allowed a guard to run headfirst into the grand bell in the castle. Without even checking for any other attackers, he knelt, set down his bow, lined up incense and a sparrow's feather.

It was only when his brother finally spoke that the lights on Genji's body flickered to life, and he dropped from his perch near the ceiling with quiet ease.

Rage swarmed his stomach. _Incense and offerings, a sparrow's feather._ As if that could make up for it, as if that would atone for his death, for Hanzo's betrayal.

Hanzo didn't recognize his voice. He seemed more surprised that his shot didn't land; he didn't _realize_. Genji's stomach twisted in knots. Hanzo didn't know him.

Mindful of his own anger, he calculated, slid smooth words Hanzo's way that got under the archer's skin faster than they should have. What should have been jagged annihilation turned to a test that Hanzo quickly failed, a test that should've been long and lengthy and at least reminiscent of a two-way challenge.

Hanzo drew his bow back hard enough to snap the strings, hard enough to nearly stumble when he let the arrow fly. That was the final marker; Genji had seen enough.

His ōdachi glided through Hanzo's last arrow, and the archer snapped just as quickly. The scuffle that followed only continued as long as it did for the purpose of of mockery; even Hanzo's dragons were weak, Genji noted.

Genji reached behind his head to remove his mask after Hanzo inquired of his identity, when his sword was at his brother's throat. Hanzo's last word was quiet, a faint, breathless little, "Genji," that dissolved into a wet gurgle before his head lolled.

Genji waited for the satisfaction to hit, for the anger swimming in his belly to turn to a sense of victory. The feeling seemed intent on taking its sweet time.

* * *

_Yù yī._  

Noun. _The desire to feel intensely again._  

It was an odd realization, that he'd become a thrill junkie in order to stop thinking about it, that he'd begun to wander. He found himself in deserts and cities he didn't know the names of, surrounded by people who looked at him and thought _Omnic_ and nothing else _._ He got into fights, took up mercenary work, finished his jobs cleanly. He visited Nepal once and left quickly; something about the easy fluidity of the population set him on edge.

He heard of the recall and ignored it for a long length of time, then arrived at Gibraltar out of boredom. McCree made note of the fact that, in his wanderings, he'd become quiet. Lena stopped asking him to race; the young newcomers avoided him.

Genji looked in the mirror once and realized that his brows were streaked with gray. It'd been four years. He was still waiting for the satisfaction to hit him like a sucker punch.

Yù yī. _The desire to see with fresh eyes, and feel things just as intensely as you did when you were younger—before expectations, before memory, before words._

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you again to Foxy for the request!!! You can check out my writing and policies at [VioletWreck](http://violetwreck.tumblr.com/) or [Saké and Blues](http://sakeandblues.tumblr.com/) on tumblr!!


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